Fearful Living In An Abusive Relationship

by Penny
(Atlanta, GA, USA)

My question is how do I get my man to see I don't deserve to be verbally abused? How can I get him to see that I don't drive him to the extent of anger he gets at?

How can I make him stop verbally abusing me? How can I not let his emotional, verbal and other forms of abuse control my life and cause me to get into such a depression that I can't even get out of bed or love myself?

How do I stop feeling like I deserve to be hurt? How do I get him to stop saying he can find some one better and saying he can replace me in a snap? Does that mean he already has someone lined up to replace?

Response from Dr. DeFoore

Hello Penny, and thanks for telling your story here. I can tell you're having a really hard time. I will try to help.

You can't get your man to do anything, or to change anything, or to understand anything. That's all up to him.

What you can do, is make good choices for yourself. It sounds like you are very much caught up in the abuse cycle, and feeling helpless and sometimes depressed. No one can fix this for you, but you can do some things that will help you to get better. It's up to you.

Here is what I suggest. Read all of the following page, and follow the recommendations you find there. These web pages were designed for people just like you. Take advantage of them, and what they offer.

I Hurt The Love Of My Life

It all started about a month ago. My girlfriend has a friend of hers that is a female that I don't particularly like. The reasons are mainly because she lied for my ex when she was cheating on me.

But what happened is I tried explaining my feelings to my girlfriend about her and she said that it was stupid the way I felt and I got angry then the next couple of days.

I let the anger build and I pushed my girlfriend, and she was in an abusive relationship.

I hurt her bad emotionally and she says she can't do that again. What can I do to regain her trust?

Response from Dr. DeFoore

Hello Brett, and thanks for telling your story here. It's good that you want to regain your girlfriend's trust. First you're going to have to learn to trust yourself.

To regain her trust, you will have to shift your focus off of her, and focus on yourself. You need healing, and it will take some work and some time.

Start by doing all of the exercises on this FAQ page. Take these seriously, Brett, and this will really help you. These are tools, and they only work for you if you use them enough to get good at using them.